The Spanish Millionaire's Runaway Bride

CHAPTER THREE (#ue95149fd-0e10-5ccf-83ab-b85deda44848)

THEY STEPPED OVER the threshold of her hotel room and Morgan immediately ducked into the bathroom. Riccardo ambled into the small room, but not far. He wasn’t letting her get much more than an arm’s distance away from him until they were at her daddy’s vineyard.

His conscience grumbled a protest. When he’d accepted this assignment, he’d done it out of desperation, to protect everything he and Mitch had built. He hadn’t thought much about the situation beyond the fact that Morgan had dumped her fiancé and she needed to come home and explain herself. Then she’d told him a bit about her fiancé and he’d felt sorry for her.

Then she’d duped him and now he was super suspicious of her.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about her ex’s ten-point plan and the sadness he’d heard in her voice. If he were to guess, he’d say she genuinely believed her fiancé hadn’t loved her.

She stepped out of the bathroom wearing jeans, a tank top and the gray canvas tennis shoes. The curls had been combed out of her long blond hair and she’d pulled it into a ponytail. Her glasses were gone and he suspected she’d put in contacts. She looked innocently beautiful. So beautiful that he could probably disabuse her of the notion that her fiancé hadn’t loved her. There wasn’t a man on the planet who wouldn’t fall for that face.

“You may not like my clothing choices but they are going to come in handy driving across the country.”

He couldn’t argue that. Or the fact that she was beginning to look really cute in jeans. Not quite hot. More like sweet and cuddly.

Thank goodness. Sweet he could resist. Hot? The way she’d looked in that form-fitting black dress? That was his wheelhouse. Instinct had almost taken over and he’d wanted to touch her, to smooth his hands along the lovely curve of her waist. But he hadn’t because he was smart. And now she was dressed like a good girl, not the kind of woman a man played with. She was perfectly safe.

So was he.

In the hall outside her room, he took the handle of the cheap black suitcase that she’d probably bought at the worst shop she could find in the airport on her way here.

“I’ll get this.”

She smiled sweetly. “Thanks.”

He wanted to trust that she really was this compliant, that the promise of several days on the road to calm her nerves had satisfied her. But his pride still stung from the way she’d ditched him at Midnight Sins.

They rode down the elevator and she used her credit card to check out. Then she motioned for him to follow her to an ATM. She withdrew cash three times, getting as much money as she could before the bank shut her off.

“Planning your escape?”

“No. Paying for my own food and hotel.”

“You could use the credit card for that. Your dad’s going to know where you are. Might as well just roll with it.”

She said nothing, simply walked out the front door, her head high, as if it took great effort to preserve her pride, and his damn conscience nudged him again.

He scrambled after her. “It’s not like I’m kidnapping you.”

“If you were, I could at least call the police. As it is, with my dad behind your taking me away, you’re more like a jailer.”

“I’m not a jailer.”

“Sure you are. You’re keeping me from going where I want to go.”

They strode the short distance back to Midnight Sins and he tossed his car keys to the valet, who rolled his eyes as he raced away to get Riccardo’s rental.

“I don’t know what he has to complain about. He gets a tip every time he takes or brings back my car.”

She laughed.

His spirits rose a little. If she could laugh, then he shouldn’t feel too bad. Because she was right. With the way all this was going down, he was her jailer. Or her guard. Which meant she probably felt like a prisoner.

The valet returned and handed the keys to Riccardo, who gave him a tip way beyond what he deserved.

He stowed Morgan’s suitcase in the trunk before getting behind the wheel. “I just realized that I don’t have anything to wear for five days on the road,” he said. “I’d planned on flying to Vegas and back to Lake Justice in the same day.”

“I’m sure we’ll pass a discount store along the way.”

“Discount store?” He glanced over at her as he started the car. He didn’t like being judgmental, but he was just about positive she’d never seen the inside of a big-box store.

But, of course, she wasn’t going to shop there, she was sending him there.

Because she had a low opinion of him?

Probably.

He shouldn’t care. No matter what she thought, she wasn’t a prisoner. And he was more like the accountability police than a jailer. He was taking her back to deal with the fallout from her canceled wedding so that cleaning up the mess didn’t default to her dad or her undoubtedly shell-shocked fiancé. He was doing a good thing, and on some level, she had to agree or she wouldn’t be on the seat beside his.

He pulled the gearshift into Drive and eased off the hotel property into the traffic of the Vegas strip. In the time that had passed since his arrival, they’d transitioned from afternoon to evening. Hotel fountains now spewed water through glorious colored lights. Neon signs began to glow.

Realizing he had no clue where he was going, he took his phone out of his pocket, set it on the dashboard and said, “Directions to Lake Justice, New York.”

After a few seconds, his GPS told him to turn around. He glanced at the green road sign up ahead and sighed. “We’re going the wrong way.”

Morgan didn’t reply.

The GPS took him to the first street where he could make a right. He turned around and headed out to the strip again, except in the opposite direction.

“Okay. Now, we’re on our way.”

She said nothing.

Fine. They could spend the next four or five days in total silence and he’d be happy. She’d probably be happy, too. She’d said she wanted time to think things through. Well, he would give it to her. Jailers or guards or even accountability police didn’t try to make friends with prisoners. They just got them to their destinations.

He refused to feel guilty.

Refused.

Except she’d said her fiancé didn’t listen to her. The idiot had thought she was angry, when she was hurt. Hurt enough to run out on a wedding with eight hundred guests.

Curiosity begged him to ask her about it. Especially since this was nothing like his own past. His fiancée had gone back to the love of her life. Morgan had run to nothing. No one.

The fact that she was quiet made him feel like scum. Even more than when she called him her jailer.

It didn’t take long until they were on the highway, headed northeast to pick up the roads that would take them east. When they left the lights of Las Vegas, the world became eerily dark. Time passed. Riccardo wasn’t sure how much because he’d been so concerned with getting Morgan into the car that he hadn’t checked his watch to see when they’d started out.

He shifted on his seat, uncomfortably aware that he’d awoken at six o’clock that morning in the eastern time zone. And it was now after ten at night, mountain time. Midnight in New York. No wonder his eyelids were scratchy. And he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d eaten.